While reading the various posted deck-lists and articles from States this past weekend I came across David Russo's interesting 3rd place Red Deck Wins build from New York. You can find the exact list a number of places online, including the middle of Antoine Ruel's article "Analyzing the Post-States Metagame" over at Channel Fireball so I won't bother to re-post it here. What I found particularly interesting about this deck was the disgusting turn 3 win possibilities provided by Kiln Field and Assault Strobe. Like most of the Magic playing world I had quickly relegated Assault Strobe into the "limited only" and "not as good as the Instant from Eventide" sections of my mind. Seeing the disgusting interaction with Kiln Fiend made me quickly reconsider however and it wasn't long before I was tinkering around with my own version of Red Deck Wins. Unfortunately despite this new two card combo I found that the same old issues I'd had with RDW were continually cropping up. Yes it's a little faster than Boros but not having access to Journey to Nowhere or Steppe Lynx make the deck much weaker against the field at large. No Kor Skyfisher means you're dead drawing to find lands to make the Geopede relevant way more often and finally the deck flat out loses to a turn 3 Pyro. I was just about to toss the entire design in the garbage when it dawned on me that you could essentially double the number of Assault Strobe combos by adding Chandra's Spitfire to the equation. While RDW might not make a good aggro deck in my opinion it certainly could make a decent aggro-combo deck (like W/W Affinity for example); with a little tinkering. Additionally if you ripped out all the "crack" lands and Geopedes you would have more room for Smoldering Spires and cards to feed your combo. As an added bonus the only rares in this deck are Goblin Guides and Desvastating Summons, cards you can easily obtain for under 30 dollars if you shop around.
Here is the list as it stands now; please be warned this is hardly a finished product. I've played a grand total of 6 games with it and won 5 of them; including a gimme win against Mono Green Eldrazi Ramp. This list can and probably will change over time as I get more testing in and I'm not even sure it's actually "tournament-worthy" at this point. I am sure however that it's very fast, it has multiple 2 card combos that can win it the game on turn 3 or 4 and it's really only about $30 to build. At the moment I don't even have a sideboard that's how "new" this deck is.
$30 Red Deck Wins:
Creatures - 22:
4x Goblin Guide
3x Goblin Bushwhacker
4x Kiln Fiend
4x Ember Hauler
3x Goblin Shortcutter
4x Chandra's Spitfire
Spells -16:
3x Devastating Summons
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Assault Strobe
3x Burst Lightning
2x Staggershock
Lands - 22:
4x Teetering Peaks
4x Smoldering Spires
14x Mountains
Thoughts: This deck might not have enough land simply because 8 of them come into play tapped, so far it hasn't been an issue but the math seems dicey. The spell ratio may not be mixed right, I really wanted to include Arc Trail/more Staggershocks but again 22 land with 8 of them tapped seem to discourage this. While I like Searing Blaze adding it back into the design would necessitate adding at least 8 "crack" lands and probably Geopedes and I'm just not prepared to do that. I honestly think Boros does the landfall aggro thing much better and your best chance of beating them is to combo out on turns 3 and 4. This works for W/W Affinity and they have fewer game winning draws.
Opinions?
-nina
I'm working on a similar build myself. One thing that has been working well is using panic spellbomb in place of smoldering spires. It becomes a more situational card and the card draw is great late game. Nothing like. Pulling a burst lightning or bolt to give your fiend one more pump!
ReplyDeleteRa
Lol, time to find out if I can reply to my own blog yet.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought of the spellbomb simply because I really do need at least 22 land. On the other hand the Goblin Shortcutter really hasn't been testing out all that well and it's possible a cantrip artifact would be better in that slot. I'll throw 3 of them in and give it a try next time I'm testing.
Thanks for the comment.
-nina
Okay, actually managed to do a pile of testing and here's the list I'm running as of this exact moment:
ReplyDeleteNovember 11, 2010
4x Goblin Guide
4x Goblin Bushwhacker
4x Ember Hauler
4x Kiln Fiend
2x Goblin Shortcutter
3x Chandra's Spitfire
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Assault Strobe
3x Burst Lightning
3x Devastating Summons
2x Arc Trail
4x Teetering Peaks
4x Smoldering Spires
15x Mountain
SB:
4x Flame Slash
2x Arc Trail
3x Mark of Mutiny
2x Tunnel Ignus
1x Goblin Shortcutter
3x Manic Vandal
I tried the Panic Spellbombs, they were okay but ultimately this deck needs bodies and spells that trigger Kiln Fiend and it was neither. It's definately better in Kuldotha Rebirth Goblin decks, which remain a viable option.
Dunno, testing out very well so far. Arc Trail is A) much cheaper than Staggershock and B) very effective vs other Red decks, not sure it shouldn't be a 3 of.
This deck is loads & loads of fun to play! The first time playing this deck my 12 year old son gouged me for 14 points of damage in one turn and finished the job on turn 6 with the two 5/5 beasties he had conjured the previous turn with "Devastating Summons"! Epic . . . :)
ReplyDelete"GOBLIN GUIDE" is actually a pretty expen$ive card the$e day$! Any suggestions as to what a suitable stand-in, or replacement could be? At the moment I only have two G.G.'s. Wouldn't mind 2 more and a playset for my son as well, but I can't see paying the going rate on eBay these days . . .
ReplyDeleteAny help would be much appreciated! Thanks :)
I'm glad you enjoyed the deck, yeah it's very fun to play and does crazy amounts of damage all at once.
ReplyDeleteAs for Gobling Guide; yeah at the time I wrote this people weren't on the GG train yet. I blame the guy on CFB who wrote that article saying there were 3 types of good decks in standard: Jace decks, Primeval Titan decks and Goblin Guide decks. Sadly I don't think they're getting any cheaper.
ReplyDeleteSo before I say anything else I want to be clear; there is absolutely no substitute for Goblin Guide in this format. Nothing is as good as it is and no matter what you put in the deck will be slightly worse without it. With that having been said the best options I could think of looked like this:
A) buy 2 more Goblin Guides; this gives you a single playset between you and your son so that if either of you wants to go to a tournament one of you can run a full set. Otherwise in games against each other you both get 2.
B) Replace the missing Goblin Guides with some combination of Spikeshot Elder (much cheaper) or even cheaper still Skittering Lizards from Worldwake. Neither card is as good but really so long as you're deck already has a couple of guides, a single Lizards and a Spikeshot Elder should be decent and actually provide a little variety while playing.
C) In casual games; just put a bunch of Bloodcrazed Goblins from M11 in your decks and when they come up *PRETEND* they are Goblin Guides. Nobody in their right mind is going to believe you're purposely playing with Bloodcrazed Goblins so it should be pretty easy to convince them it's a proxy.
Hope that helps and thanks for reading the blog.
Thank-you so much for your suggestions! :)
ReplyDeleteYes, I can see how it's difficult, if not impossible, to replace G.G.; nothing else compares to it - I know I couldn't think of anything. I will certainly investigate the potential of "Spikeshot Elder" & "Skittering Lizards."
Actually, I ended up shelling out close to $18.00 last night at the local gaming store to nab 2 more G.G.'s, so we at least have one full playset of them now and can share them as needed. For fun/casual games a home we can certainly *PRETEND* with proxy cards - lol
Thanks again!
Richard
What do you think about a card like "Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle" in this deck? I'm thinking that with any luck you should have won the game by the time this could come online, or very close to it! It could however help power up the Spitfire if the game looks to be lasting abit longer then anticipated.
ReplyDeleteRichard
I think the real problem more than even just the number of lands is that you're only running 14 Mountains and you have no real way of fishing them out. In a different deck with 24 land, some Scalding Tarns/Arid Mesa's and Plated Geopede's this might work but it's just going to take too long and require too many parts to get online here in this deck. (At least imho, I haven't tried Valakut's in here)
ReplyDeleteAs always thanks for the comments! :)
Heh, I very intentionally went digging through your older posts to see if you had made a post on this deck. I just recently used it at a Hairy-T FNM and came out 3-0 placing first! I was surprised at how cheap it is (Goblin Guides are definitely still a little out of my budget) and how well it worked. Definitely tons of fun to play and stealing my opponents Abyssal Persecutor, swinging in for game winning damage, and then tossing it back to him is a sweet play. Thanks a lot for providing something for us poor-fags to play with at FNM!
ReplyDeleteP.S. I'm still confused about why you use 3 Devastating Summons. I feel that two was enough and sometimes was a dead-card in hand. I'd only really use it if I were in a bad position against a Titan or something.
Lol thanks for the positive comment; although you're probably gonna get me in trouble with the moms and kids who read this website :)
ReplyDeleteYeah I'm really fond of the deck particularly because it performs VERY well against both Primeval Titan based Ramp decks and Jace based Control decks. There's something pretty satisfying about being a 600 dollar deck with "some Goblin Guides and Red commonons"...
As for the 3 Dev Summons; the deck is basically a combination of 4 different game winning combos; one of which is Dev Summons/Bushwhacker. In a deck with zero card-draw you need 3 to guarantee seeing one a game in a 5 turn game (which is about when this usually wins; sometimes faster but rarely later than turn 5). Plus it's only a dead card if you've already blown up all your land; playing Dev Summons for 1 land is fine if it triggers the Kiln Fiend or works with Bushwhacker:
For example; Turn 4 I play a Mountain and float four mana, I Dev Summons for 2 1/1's, then I Dev Summons for 2 more 1/1s and then I play Bushwhacker with kicker. Not only do I still have 2 land in play but I just came at you for 10. Dead card?
:)
Thanks for reading, hopefully I'll get out to more FNM's soon. Been meaning to go to the Hairy T West one for like 2 months now but Winter HATES me and I'm sick all the time :(
Any thoughts on the suitability of a couple of the new cards from "Mirrodin Besieged" in this deck? I was thinking of the creature spell "GOBLIN WARDRIVER" and the instant spell "RALLY THE FORCES" in particular.
ReplyDeleteThanks :)
Richard
Richard, great to see you're still keeping up with this old RDW deck.
ReplyDeleteWhen I built this there were basically two ways to try and win the game on turns 3-4 with a mono Red deck: Playing a bunch of Artifacts/Kuldotha Rebirth and just going faster with swarms of 1/1's and tokens *or* Assault Strobe/Kiln Fiend/Devestating Summons. At the time the so called "Kuldotha Goblins" deck was very unreliable and REQUIRED you to mulligan until you had a 0CC Artifact and a Kuldotha Rebirth in hand. I have never liked those kinds of decks personally and I honestly felt that the RDW version with Kiln Fiend and Assault Strobe was just "better".
With the release of Mirrodin Besieged however things have changed significantly; in fact at this point I feel both decks are basically on par and the Kuldotha deck may well be the better of the two. While you certainly COULD add Goblin Wardrive to the previous build I don't think you'd get as much out of it; because this version of RDW was designed to kill with 1-3 creatures in play Maximum.
For a good example of a deck that DOES get max value out of the Goblin Wardriver (and won't cost you an arm and a leg) try the following link (first deck on the top):
http://thecardboardwitch.blogspot.com/2011/02/standard-deviations-10-stating-obvious.html
I am not convinced Rally the Forces is a good enough card in constructed play (although it seems awesome in draft) but it would *also* likely be better in a deck full of 1/1 Goblin tokens than in the old RDW.
Thanks for the comment and I hope that answers your questions